


Nothing But My Way

by wishandripen



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: AU where everyone goes to therapy and Jack and Kent are functional exes, Coming Out, Established Relationship, Homophobic Slurs, M/M, don't worry all the homophobes get punched in the face, hockey-typical cursing, hockey-typical level of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 22:47:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9145516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishandripen/pseuds/wishandripen
Summary: Jack comes out, Kent throws some punches, and Bitty bakes his feelings.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by [ this post](http://spiritusignis.tumblr.com/post/155011191946/i-just-have-this-hc-in-my-head-and-like-jack-and) from spiritusignus. I hope I did your headcanon justice. The title is from Britney Spears’ “Stronger,” which I am 110% positive is playing in Kent’s head as he navigates the media circus at the end of this fic, because the boy’s a Britney stan and that’s just how it is.

It had been a few months (okay, four months and three weeks, but who was counting?) since Jack and Bittle came out to the NHL, and honestly, Jack couldn’t complain. He got to have his boyfriend on his arm at media events, he wasn’t worried about being outed every time he and Bittle grabbed coffee, and most importantly, nothing catastrophic had happened. He was allowed to have this. He could have his A and his team and his boyfriend and his life, all at once, and nobody was going to take it away from him.

Of course, not everyone was as welcoming as the Falcs. Jack didn’t really mind the checks; everyone wanted to get in a hit at Bad Bob’s son, so he’d been getting smacked around in the rink for a decade. He barely noticed an uptick in physical aggression, and Bitty always had the cutest worried face when Jack got back from a rough game. But the verbal shit was something else.

George had warned Jack about the importance of not flying off the handle the first time he heard a queer slur. “You know it’s wrong, I know it’s wrong — I, of all people, Jack — but you can’t let it get to you.”

Jack knew that, he really did, but… “What if it’s just too much to handle?”

“Well,” she’d grinned, “I never said it wouldn’t get to _me_ , and I bet the boys would be pretty ticked off too. I mean it when I say we’ve got your back.”

And that had been the end of it, more or less. The first time a D-man yelled out, “Fag!” in Jack’s direction, the lunk had been clotheslined by around 450 pounds, combined, of enraged Falconers.

“That’s — our — fucking — alternate, you shitstain!” Poots had yelled between hits, and Tater had been too incensed to bother with English.

That had been the last time a Flyer messed with Jack directly. The same thing happened when an Aero made a BJ motion at Jack, and when a Schooner checked him for no reason, and when a Blackhawk even looked funny at him.

“I know that сука,” Tater growled when Jack confronted him about it. “Was planning something. I see and I’m think, Zimmboni been through enough already, I’ll be proactive.”

“Tates, when did you even learn the word ‘proactive?’” Jack had said, and then he’d been too busy fighting off Tater’s attempt at a noogie to think about how much his team cared about him.

It was great having so many people in his corner, just as good as he’d ever felt at Samwell, but sometimes it still wasn’t enough. Sometimes the satisfaction of watching a homophobe get punched in the face didn’t erase what he’d already said to you, and sometimes Jack still stayed up all night worrying, adorable boyfriend and carefully-monitored med regimen be damned. There were some things that therapy couldn’t fix, and the anticipation of seeing your ex on the ice for the first time since you came out was one of them.

Sure, Kent had texted after he saw Jack’s announcement, a brief _congrats_ and _call me when u get this_ , and they’d chatted for a few minutes about how Jack was doing and how Kent’s love life was restricted to cuddling his “amazing, doting cat, who cares about me more than you ever have, no offense,” but they hadn’t really connected. They definitely hadn’t talked about whether Kent was planning to come out himself, or how he wanted to handle the next Aces/Falconers match-up. “Come over afterwards and we’ll have shitty takeout while my cat sheds on your clothes” wasn’t much of a game plan.

Which meant that Jack was facing the Aces on their home turf with no idea what kind of reception he was going to get. Thanks a fucking ton, Kent.

After that clusterfuck of a game last season, the Aces and Falcs were beginning to develop a bit of a rivalry. Jack supposed it was natural for expansion teams to pair off like that, but it did make his life significantly harder now that he had to worry about not only Kent, but the rest of the Aces trying their best to kick his team’s ass out of sheer spite.

They got to the Starbucks Center without incident, which was more than Jack could say when they played at Boston, and Jack made it through the pre-game interviews with the same media face and hockey robot voice he’d been using since the Q. Shits used to make a game of it, yelling out ridiculous scenarios for Jack to spin: “The opposing team bitch-slapped your dad and said Bitty’s pies taste like shit — go!”

“Well, Barry, they’re playing their game and I’m playing mine, but at the end of the day it’s all hockey. Just one in eighty-two, eh?”

Jack didn’t think even Shitty could have prepared him for this, though.

The first two periods were relatively uneventful, if by “uneventful” you meant a ridiculously difficult game where you had to fight for every goal, but at least nobody was calling you a fairy while you did it. Tensions were high, everybody’s blood was up, and Thirdy had had to pull two rookies back from defending Jack against imagined slights. Despite all of that, Jack wasn’t ready when it finally happened.

The bomb dropped at the bottom of the third, just when Jack had thought there might be one franchise in the NHL that didn’t need to stoop to petty insults to beat him. Some six-foot-three asshole took offense to Jack stealing the puck from Kent, leaned over and hollered, “Not on my fucking ice, you cock-sucker!” and then. Then he wasn’t there.

Because Kent “look at this face, Zimms, I’m too pretty to fight!” Parson had decked his own teammate.

“ _What the shitting sideways fuck, Jonesy!_ ” Parse was screaming, one hand still grabbing onto his supine teammate’s jersey. “‘Not on my ice?’ If you ever, _ever_ say shit like that on _my goddamn ice_ again I’ll get you thrown off this team, don’t fucking test me!”

At some point in the tirade the refs had rushed over and separated Parse and the dickwad, and the game went back into play. The Falcs won, if only because the Aces’ goalie was still shell-shocked, and everyone stumbled out of the locker room for post-game interviews. Jack mumbled out something about being unable to control other players’ reactions to his sexuality and no, he hadn’t expected anything like today when he came out. Mercifully, his phone buzzed just as the interviews ended.

It was Kent. _we still on for tonight?_ the text read, and Jack figured, why not?

 

* * *

 

“They want me to do a press conference, Zimms,” Kent said, waving his chopsticks around and taking another swig of what was probably way too expensive wine to be drinking with a five-dollar carton of kung pao chicken. “A _press conference._ Apologizing for my actions and, like, opening my veins for the reporters to feed on like the vampires they are.”

There was no reasoning with Kent when he was in a mood like this, but sometimes you could wait it out. Jack took another bite of his chicken with broccoli and tried to ignore the giant Maine Coon judging his every move. “And you’re actually gonna apologize?” he asked.

“Maybe? Probably? Shit, I don’t know,” Kent sighed. “I mean, fuck if I want to, but you can’t just deck a teammate, you know? But then you can’t just be a homophobic shitrooster to the only out player on the league either.”

“Shitrooster?” Jack mused.

“Yeah, you heard me, it rolls off the tongue. Seriously, though,” Kent added, “there’s not much they can do to me if I don’t apologize. ‘S not like the Aces are gonna fire their best player, and none of my family or friends give a shit what the media says about me.”

“Your friends being me and this cat?” Jack asked.

“Yes, actually, fuck you. But, you know, I could just- I could do it. Just not give a shit about apologizing, or the media, and say, ‘No, my teammate’s actions were unacceptable, and I refuse to rescind my comments on them.’ Whadaya think?”

Jack thought back to a much younger Kent, brimming with potential and life, and thought it had been a while since Kent had looked so much like himself. “I think,” he said, “you’re Kent Parson, and you can do whatever the hell you want.”

Kent’s grin could have powered an entire casino. “I am, aren’t I?” he said. “I’m Kent fucking Parson.”

 

* * *

 

After a red-eye back to Providence and maybe an hour next to his boyfriend, Jack’s phone started buzzing “fit to scare a beehive,” as Bittle put it drowsily. “Go back to sleep, hon, I’ll check it for — oh,” he said, falling silent.

“Is it the groupchat again?” Jack asked.

“Babe, it’s Parson, and he’s… you have to see this for yourself.”

Jack grabbed his phone to find a Youtube video labeled NHL STAR KENT PARSON COMES OUT in all caps. “It must have been that goddamn press conference,” he said, half to himself.

“You didn’t say anything, I don’t know, untoward to him, did you?” Bitty asked. “Anything that would have made him decide to do this?”

“I didn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know,” Jack said. He hit Play.

“—unwilling to rescind my comments on my teammate’s actions,” the tiny image of Parse said. “What he said was homophobic and unacceptable. It reflected poorly on our team and on myself, as a captain, an Ace, and a gay man—” the assembled reporters began to erupt, flashbulbs going off all over, but Kent barrelled on— “and while in hindsight I would have chosen a less aggressive way to get my message across, I certainly couldn’t allow Jones’ bigoted remarks to stand as a representation of Aces hockey." He smiled the signature Kent Parson come-at-me smirk, complete with perfectly cocked eyebrow. Jack had caught him tweezing them once when he was sixteen. “No further questions.”

Jack might have been less shocked when Parse hit his teammate, and Bitty wasn’t far behind him.

“Just like that,” Bitty said, as if in a trance. “He just — decides he wants to come out one night, does it, and that’s that.”

“Well, he doesn’t have to be the first out player,” Jack said.

“I know that, and I know things are different when you’re the face of a franchise, and I know this doesn’t mean he won’t get the same nasty stuff you got, but — but this is gonna be easier on him than it was for us.”

“Yeah,” Jack said, recognizing Bitty’s ‘processing something’ tone.

“Which, to be fair, does not in any way negate the homophobia of the NHL.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Jack replied, curling an arm around his boyfriend.

“And,” Bitty added, “it’s ridiculous of me to be jealous of that, considering everything he’s going through, and I’m over your history with him, I really am, and — what’s his favorite flavor of pie?”

“Bits,” Jack said, “one day you’ll learn that you can’t bake your way out of your feelings.”

“But that day is not this day, Mr Zimmermann.”

 

* * *

 

The day after Kent came out, Jack woke up to a flurry of texts from Parse. _holy shit how did ur boy even make all of this so fast_ , and _you totally paid for express shipping didn’t u_ , and _I guess this makes up for u not texting me after the conference, my only moral support was kit & she sucks at cuddles when shes hungry_.

“How much did you send him?” Jack asked.

“Four pies, three kinds of cookies, and those Danishes I’ve been fiddling with,” Bittle replied.

_I think we’re even_ , Jack texted back.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this fic! You can find me on tumblr as [ ontologicalprior,](http://ontologicalprior.tumblr.com/) my Check Please sideblog, or [ sendasalami.](http://sendasalami.tumblr.com/)  
> By “I of all people,” I do in fact mean that George is a lesbian, as God intended.  
> “Сука” is a Russian cuss, around the same level of offensiveness as “bitch.”  
> The Schooners and Aeros are Ngozi’s (well, the Aeros used to exist?), and I just dislike the Flyers and Blackhawks. I don’t mean to imply that any actual, real-life player on either of those teams is a homophobe. Similarly, I chose the name "Jones" because it's super generic; no actual hockey players were involved in the making of this fic.  
> I pulled the Aces’ arena name out of the ether after looking at a list of NHL arena names for far too long. I would’ve made it a casino sponsor except, you know, gambling regulations.  
> Bitty is 100% okay with Jack and Parse’s bro dinner endealment; this is kind of an AU in that Jack and Kent are functional exes and nobody hates anybody.  
> [ Here is Kit Purrson judging you and your healthy takeout choices.](http://mymodernmet.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/archive/5LJIaEyCgXUHj3RMK6qp_robertsijka1.jpg) Kent absolutely paid for that photoshoot.


End file.
